Concentrate on the basics, but add color to get the edge
Michele Guy and John McDonough
Waiting for the printer market to bottom out? Take note: You can buy a nice color ink-jet printer in the $500-to-$700 range or a 6- to 10-page-per-minute monochrome laser printer for about twice that amount. Workgroup printers in the 11- to 30-ppm range vary widely in price, depending on their features and the options you select. Laser printers offering more than 10 ppm typically provide minimum resolutions of 600 by 600 dots per inch, automatic input and emulation switching, support for PCL (Printer Control Language) and PostScript, bidirectional monitoring software, and remote-printer-management software. Features previously found only in very high-end printers, such as mu
ltiprotocol printing, are drifting into the midrange market.
Many vendors are introducing support for 1200- by 1200-dpi resolution, but check things out yourself. With monochrome text, you might not notice a difference between 1200 by 1200 and 600 by 600.
Color ink-jets usually cost just a few hundred dollars more than monochrome ink-jets. These inexpensive color printers are excellent for adding splashes of color to borders, logos, and clip art. In addition, 720- by 360-dpi ink-jets are appearing in a market that was once limited to maximum resolutions of 360 by 360 dpi.
Keep in mind, however, that the resolutions reported by printer vendors actually translate into addressability. You might be able to address 720 by 360 dpi, but if your dots (similar to a monitor's dot pitch) overlap much, the
real
resolution (i.e., the sharpness of your output) is potentially quite different than what the reported resolution would lead you to assume.
Color laser printer vendors are now a
iming their wares at the general-business market. Color laser printers can produce full-color output in pages per minute rather than in minutes per page, and their prices have dropped substantially during the past two years.
This month we look at eight 6- to 10-ppm monochrome lasers, 10 11- to 30-ppm monochrome lasers, seven color ink-jets, and four color lasers. All were released to the market on or after June 1, 1994.
HOW TO USE THIS GUIDE
We used our standard suite of DOS, Windows, and Mac OS-based printer tests to choose winners in four categories: color ink-jets, 6- to 10-ppm lasers, 11- to 30-ppm lasers, and color laser printers. Using charts like the one shown here, we summarize test details about the winners and Runners-up: in each of these categories.
A printer's combined engine and processor speed when running our test files, measured in pages per minute. Higher numbers indicate faster performance.
A v
endor's rating for engine or print-head speed; does not include a printer's processing time.
The retail price of the printer as configured for our tests. This price may include optional memory (see the Roll Call on page 168 of this issue; not available on-line).
A composite rating for performance, features, usability, and quality, based on a 10-point scale; higher numbers are better.
THE IMPRESSIVE PARTS
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PAPERFEED MECHANISM
A roller picks a piece of paper from the input tray and passes it to an anti-skew, heavy-friction roller. From there, it passes an aligning roller, and then a metering roller. It then goes through the EP engine, where it gets the image impressed onto it. From there, it goes through to the fusing hot roller. Finally, it heads through rollers that escort the end product to the exit bin.
PAPE
R TRAYS
Think carefully of all the types of paper you might need your printer to handle. If capacity is important, check the Roll Call on page 168 for maximum paper-capacity ratings.
ELECTROPHOTOGRAPHIC ENGINE
The EP engine receives the bit map from the RIP and, using a low-power laser, transfers the image by coating the photoconductor drum with toner. It then transfers that image onto paper.
LCD PANEL
Before you buy a printer, test-drive the user interface that monitors and controls print jobs. Software programs that you install on a PC are increasingly replacing printers' LCD menus.
RASTER-IMAGE PROCESSOR
The RIP comprises a BIOS, an emulator, and a band-building system. The BIOS receives input from an incoming port and buffers that data, transmitting it at the highest transfer rate that it and the processor can sustain. The emulator scans the data and determines its PDL (page-description languag
e), parses it, and then renders a full-page bit map. The band-building system quickly creates a series of bands, which it then hands off to the EP engine.
INTERFACES
The more interface options a printer has, the better. Parallel ports should be high-speed and bidirectional, with support for the IEEE 1284 standard. SCSI connectors should be SCSI-2, preferably fast and wide. For a network printer, look for fast Ethernet, LocalTalk, and/or Token Ring. You might need an SNMP-compliant interface, but be wary of anything proprietary. Good network printers can receive data from all ports simultaneously; look for "multiprotocol, multitasking" models.
29 Printers That Mean Business
